


Home

by asexualjuliet



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Chromatic Character, Filipino Character, Jason Mendoza Deserves the World, The other three humans are barely here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 08:55:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21176747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asexualjuliet/pseuds/asexualjuliet
Summary: There’s a lot of places Jason calls home. There’s the old motel where he lived the time Mom and Donkey Doug lived together, there’s Pillboi’s house that always smells like paciencia cookies and lumpia. There’s Jacksonville in its entirety, his top-ten-swamp-cities city, and there’s the neighborhood.A character study: Jason Mendoza and the concept of home.





	Home

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Taste of Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17400434) by [NancyBrown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NancyBrown/pseuds/NancyBrown). 

> I took heavy inspiration for this from a fic called “Taste of Home” by NancyBrown. It’s where I got Pillboi’s back balcony, his Lola and her lumpia, and their lime-green flavor-aid, as well as a lot of little details!
> 
> I tried to showcase Jason’s Filipino heritage, so if I got anything wrong, please correct me.  
“Iho” is a term of endearment for a son, and “apo” one for a grandson. Lumpia is a Filipino dish, and Paciencia is a type of meringue cookie.
> 
> I really hope you guys enjoy!
> 
> Edit: 4x8 said Jason’s mom died when he was little, but the medallion says that’s dumb, so we’re not gonna do that.

When Jason Mendoza is five, home is an old motel where he lives with mom and dad. It smells like smoke, and sometimes people in the halls will come home drunk and yell, but when that happens, Jason’s mama protects him, with soft hugs and even softer words, with _ baby _ and _ honey _ and _ sweetheart _ and _ iho. _Her perfume smells nice and it blocks out the terrible smoky smell of everything else, so he stays like that for as long as he can, hugging her as tight as he can with his little arms and breathing in her perfume until she lets go. 

-

When Jason is seven, they leave the motel and its smoky smell behind. Dad leaves, Jason doesn’t know where he goes, and Jason and Mama live in the old car that breaks down every few miles. 

(Jason never thought he’d miss the motel).

-

When Jason is nine, he starts at elementary school and meets his best homie. Pillboi is all smiles and warmth, and his house smells like cookies because his Lola bakes them every day. Jason loves the smell of Pillboi’s house so much more than the suffocating smoke of home. 

-

When Jason is eleven, Mama gets work as a maid at a hotel, and after school, Jason spends all afternoon at Pillboi’s house, having watermelon seed spitting contests off the balcony. Pillboi always wins, but someday, Jason’s sure he’ll be able to beat him. 

He goes home to a different motel than before, one that smells less of smoke and more like something Pillboi says is called _ weed. _His mother doesn’t have the time to hug him tight anymore, so instead of her perfume, all he breathes in is weed.

-

When Jason is thirteen, Mama scrapes together enough money to pay rent, and they move into an old apartment that’s probably not up to legal standards, but that’s home, he guesses, even though it’s crawling with roaches and smells like mold. He and Pillboi try to make cookies there one day, to cover the smell, but they forget about them when they go to play Madden 2000, and by the time Jason’s mama gets home, the entire apartment reeks of burnt cookies. 

-

When Jason is fifteen, home is Pillboi’s house, with the warmth that hits him as soon as he walks in and Lola’s paciencia cookies that fill him up with happiness. Home is finally winning a seed-spitting contest by accidentally spitting the seed onto someone’s head down below, eyes going wide as Pillboi starts to laugh, as the someone in the parking lot below them doesn’t notice and keeps walking. Home is watermelon dripping down Jason’s face and lime flavor-aid sliding down his throat, it’s Lola coming outside, calling _ Apo, Jason, I made lumpia! _

Home is the way Lola says his name. It fills Jason with joy, from the soft _ J _ sound she makes to the slight _ n. _ There’s an emphasis she puts on the first syllable, because even though she’s lived in America for twenty years, Lola still can’t quite get a handle on English, but the way she says his name is the same as when she calls Pillboi _ apo, _ and it fills Jason’s heart with love. 

-

When Jason is eighteen, home is _ Jacksonville, _with its swamps and its rundown buildings and Lynyrd Skynyrd High School in the junkyard by the old motel. Home is the Buffalo Wild Wings on the corner (the nice one, not the one above the gas station), where he eats fifty jalapeño poppers in two minutes and then has to go to the emergency room, and home is the man in the bowtie at the bus stop who offers Jason six hundred dollars to put some weird turtles in his duffle bag and bring them to Daytona Beach. 

(Home is also hotwiring a swamp boat to Daytona and getting six hundred dollars. Jacksonville is cool like that).

-

When Jason is twenty-one, Dad comes back home and Mama gets angry. 

(Jason hears the screaming from outside the house).

But Dad is cool, and he gives Jason and Pillboi pot to smoke and he sneaks Jason into bars and he says _ don’t call me Dad, call me Donkey Doug. _

So Jason loves Donkey Doug. 

He thinks that Donkey Doug probably loves him, too. 

-

When Jason is twenty-five, home is his dance crew. They think twenty thoughts about dance for seven minutes every day, and things are good. 

(Except for the time when Sheila, the black market alligator dealer with the pierced jawbone, tried to marry Donkey Doug and go to Sarasota).

(Or the time right after that when Donkey Doug got mad at Jason for framing Sheila for boogie board theft and so he started a new dance crew called #DougLife and then Jason had to slash all their tires outside of the old abandoned orange juice factory).

(And also the time Donkey Doug said he was never coming back to Dance Dance Resolution. That one totally sucked).

(But other than that, life is pretty dope).

-

When Jason is twenty-seven, he learns that you cannot, in fact, use a snorkel to breathe out of a locked safe, and if you try that, you will most likely die. 

And if Jason’s being honest, that kinda sucks for him. 

-

When Jason is dead, he’s confused. 

This isn’t much of a change, since Jason is confused most of the time, but he misses home, and he knows he's not supposed to be here. 

He misses Pillboi’s balcony and Lola’s paciencia, he misses the smell of Mama’s perfume and the taste of lime flavor-aid in the summer. 

Jason’s only friend is Eleanor, who’s also not supposed to be here, and Jason likes Eleanor except sometimes she’s mean to him. 

Later, he meets Chidi, and Chidi is much nicer than Eleanor. Chidi gets nervous a lot, especially when Jason speaks loudly or talks about Jacksonville, but he listens to every word Jason says, and that makes Jason feel pretty special. 

And Tahani. 

Tahani is tall and pretty, the kind of girl who’d be unattainable back in Jacksonville, and now that she’s Jason’s… 

Well, she’s_ not _ Jason’s, is she? She might be Jianyu’s, but Jason still doesn’t know who Jianyu is. 

And then he meets Janet. And _ Janet _ is his, his gorgeous, caring, beautiful _ not a girl _ who _ loves _ him. 

(He thinks she’s the only one he’s ever loved like this).

Jason feels his eyes turn into cartoon hearts when he looks at her, and now, when he says _ I do _ in the foyer of Tahani’s house and Janet says _ I do _ back and Eleanor and Tahani smile and clap, he’s happier than he’s ever been. 

And home is_ here_, Jason thinks. It’s here, in the foyer with his friends and the first _ not a girl _he’s ever loved. It’s the people he loves, Janet and Tahani and Eleanor and Chidi. 

And maybe Pillboi’s missing, and so are Lola and Mama and Donkey Doug. 

But no one can have everything. 

And so Jason is happy. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> All mistakes are my own, please let me know if you see any!
> 
> Kudos/Comments are greatly appreciated!


End file.
